The new Beorning race/class combination made its debut in LOTRO’s Update 15. Players can unlock the class for 1000 TP – or, for 1295 TP, the class and character slot combination.

ALICE

Even if my female Beorning didn’t reach level 20 yet, I’m pretty positive about this new race/class. First of all, armours. How gorgeous are they? My favourite is the second one, with Radagast’s hood and those awesome shoulder pads.

While I’m a happy sustainer of Roleplaying with Hobbits, enjoying the environment, meeting people and so on, I think the best way to enjoy the game with a Beorning is fighting foes. I love switching to the bear shape and the best part is you can still spot the tattoo. One thing that isn’t possible (yet) is having the bear fur matching with the color of the human hair, I’d love seeing bears of different colors.

Usually I didn’t enjoy playing with Women in LOTRO, because of how they look wearing dresses, I think that female Beornings have a better body shape. My favourite skill is the Ferocious Roar, so far, because it lets you gain enough Wrath to use the Skin-change skill. Now I can’t wait to be able to ‘Bake a Honey-cake’!

My first impression on Beorning is totally positive (I hope it will remain this way even when I’ll reach higher levels) and I decided to put aside my other characters to focus more on my she-beorning!

BRITTA

I was pretty skeptical of the new race/class combination, as the race is not very prominent in Middle-earth, and allowing an influx of Beornings in LOTRO seemed a bit lore-breaking. From a gamer’s perspective, however, the new class sounded fun – I mean, who wouldn’t want to transform into a bear mid-battle?

The Beornings look nice: they appear more like Dunlendings and have two amazing starter armour sets and more unique character customisation options – but they do not feel very bear-like. I also would have loved to have fur colour relative to the Beorning’s hair colour.

While the Beorning is a very powerful (and unique) class, I’ll admit I grew tired of it fairly quickly. My Beorning, Berfrith, has only just reached level 25. I’m hoping to play her a bit more soon so I can see what the class is like at higher levels.

MARIA

When the Beorning class was introduced I was convinced that I didn’t need one. I thought that, maybe in a few months or so, I might think of getting one, but not now. However, last weekend I bought the class and created Medweda (Which is derived from the Russian word “Medved” which means bear…yeah I went down that road). While she’s still level 12, I can easily say that she became immediately my second favourite character!

I’m obsessed with the facial tattoo options. However, I wished there were either more, or at least more diverse hair options for female Beornings. Although, I do have to admit that the hairdo I ended up choosing is totally badass! I’ll be honest, I’ve been spoiling my Beorning from the start and even decided to get her a fancy bear mask from the store.

So far I’ve only reached level 12, so my gaming experience with Medweda is limited. Yet, from what I can tell, it is not only enjoyable to fight with her in bear-shape, it even feels easy and smooth to level up. With Medweda, I chose the blue trait tree “The Hide”, but I plan to create at least one more Beorning in order to test the other trait trees as well.

Author: Britta Siemen
Britta first read The Hobbit when she was ten years old and has since devoted the majority of her time to studying and writing about Tolkien's legendarium. When not immersed in maps and books, she can be found battling the agents of Sauron in The Lord of the Rings Online.